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Thursday, 17 November 2011

Not funny, not negligible, but often ignored.

If you’ve been plugged into the net you’ve probably seen the story of the 2 football players in Iran who are in trouble because one slapped the backside of the other during a goal celebration (on a related note, I am still vaguely waiting for footballs’ escalating goal celebrations to reach full on oral sex. Or maybe that’s just a fantasy hope, but I digress). The powers that be in Iran were Not Amused.
And most of the reporting on this has been on a slightly comedic slant. “Oh isn’t it silly!” “They’re going to get in trouble for that?!” with much chortling and snickering.

Even less funny is that the homophobia this reaction stems from has gay people executed in Iran. Much much less funny

It reminds me a lot of how people spoke of Dubai in the wake of GBLT people speaking out against such a homophobic location being selected for the World Cup. Oh it didn’t matter. We were over-reacting. We were being silly and hysterical and drama queens.

And now? Cue the stories about how “modern” Dubai is – like being modern means that it isn’t homophobic with grossly homophobic laws? Beautiful . And to get us pesky pesky pesky GBLT people to shut up whining they talk about a “thriving underground gay movement” yeah – the key word here is underground, hidden, moving – because being gay is still illegal with penalties ranging from deportation to flogging. Ah, they protest, but it’s better than much of the rest of the Middle East and certainly the Arabian peninsula. Gah – “we’re not as homophobic as Saudi Arabia” is a really really really shoddy standard. Oh and then someone’s going to say “hey, they may deport and torture gay people but at least it isn’t enforced that often.” Do I even have to respond to that?